<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>In The Becoming by cowboykylux</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28018863">In The Becoming</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboykylux/pseuds/cowboykylux'>cowboykylux</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>8 Nights of Light (Hanukkah Series) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Mob, Existentialism, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hanukkah, Introspection, Jewish Character, Jewish Holidays, Judaism, Kylo Loves His Wife, Light Angst, Mentioned Snoke (Star Wars), Mob Boss Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:47:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,523</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28018863</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboykylux/pseuds/cowboykylux</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On the second night of Hanukkah, Kylo Ren finds himself sitting in synagogue on a Friday night. Ruminating on life, love, divinity and his place in the world, he finds that the answer always comes back to you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Reader, Kylo Ren/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>8 Nights of Light (Hanukkah Series) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050878</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In The Becoming</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was inspired by one of my favorite songs by Leonard Cohen. I hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>If it be your will, that I speak no more</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And my voice be still, as it was before</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I will speak no more, I shall abide until</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I am spoken for, if it be your will</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Kylo has never been a religious man. Yes, he goes to synagogue, and yes he celebrates the holidays. Yes he keeps Kosher and he knows the mother tongue, yes he wears his chai proudly around his neck. But he’s not so sure he believes, really <em>believes</em>. Too much of a skeptic, he always has been, even his mother says so. He doesn’t know if anything is out there, condemning or judging him. He’s never been concerned with condemnation, Kylo thinks.</p><p>Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true, he muses as your palm smooths up against his, and your fingers twine together. He steals a glance at you, just a peek at you from the corner of his eye. He hopes to see you stealing one at him too, but you are staring straight ahead listening to his uncle, Rabbi Luke, give the shabbat service on this Friday night. It is the second night of Hanukkah, and Luke always gets excited about adding in the special verses and prayers.</p><p>Kylo speaks them when he’s meant to, but he finds that when he does, it is not an all-knowing all-powerful God to whom he prays.</p><p>It’s to you.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>If it be your will, that a voice be true</em>
</p><p>
  <em>From this broken hill, I will sing to you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>From this broken hill</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All your praises they shall ring</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If it be your will, to let me sing</em>
</p><p> </p><p>For as long as Kylo can remember, you have occupied the holy space in his mind. If he has a soul, you are the one whose fingers are clutched around it. And how kind are you, that with this power you hold all you want to do is love him? He has loved you for as long as he has known you.</p><p>Kylo would do anything – <em>anything</em> to protect you, to keep you happy, keep you safe. He knows no other person who deserves the magnitude of his strength; and if he did, he would strike them down so you can remain on the pedestal that you have rightfully carved for yourself out of his ribs.</p><p><strong><em>Beshert</em></strong>, Uncle Luke had called it. Two halves of a whole, cut from unique unseen scissors, fitting only with their missing partner. Kylo had never been more divinely inspired, than by learning of this ideology during one of Luke’s school sessions. They had tried to encourage him to become a Rabbi in his own right, follow in his uncle’s footsteps and keep him out of the crime which his family was infamous for. Poor Luke had to deal with him for an entire summer, taking Kylo under his wing and teaching him all he knew.</p><p>It hadn’t gone well.</p><p>Sitting there in synagogue with your hand in his, Kylo remembers the hours of studying and of discussion, asking all the right questions but not being satisfied with any of the answers:</p><p>“Maybe that is the point,” Luke had offered one summer afternoon, when Kylo wished he were enjoying lunch with you instead of being lectured by his uncle, “Maybe we’re never supposed to be satisfied. Maybe we’re supposed to spend our time questioning, learning, and working towards answers that may or may not come.”</p><p>“How long have we spent questioning, Uncle Luke?” Kylo had grumbled, thirteen and angry, so filled with rage that he has no outlet for expressing. “How many thousands of years? You’d think we could agree on an answer for <em>something.</em>”</p><p>He has nothing but his books, and they are so very vague.</p><p>“Ah, but the beauty of it all is in the becoming.” Uncle Luke had said, and that’s something that has stuck with Kylo for his entire life.</p><p>In the present, Kylo frowns at the memory. You give him a squeeze of your hand, before pulling it away to gently pet through the baby’s soft hair as she fusses in your arms. He leans over and taps her on her little shoulder, and she gives you the <em>exact </em>same look that you always give him when you think he’s about to do something very silly.</p><p>The similarity stuns him for a moment, and he just presses the smallest little kiss to the top of her head, and she lets out a happy sound, before snuggling back against your neck.</p><p>He doesn’t blame her, that’s where he would spend all his time too, if he could.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>From this broken hill</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All your praises they shall ring</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If it be your will, to let me sing</em>
</p><p> </p><p>For too much of Kylo’s life, he has felt like he was drowning, a raging storm out in the open oceans. Leia and Han giving up on him at such a young age had done it, he’s sure. Allowing Snoke to come into his life and ensnare him with promises of power and control – control he desperately sought – had been a nail in a coffin. The gash in his face at the hands of his dearly departed sister reminds him that it didn’t have to be that way – but it had, hadn’t it?</p><p>He was drowning, gasping and spluttering on life, limbs sore and aching in his bones. He killed and maimed and brutally beat those who Snoke had commanded, and he had done so without any thought, hoping hoping hoping that perhaps now he would feel something, perhaps now he would be free.</p><p>Kylo should have known you were the one who would free him, he should have known from the minute he had asked you to dance at your bat mitzvah, two pre-teens awkwardly stepping on one another’s toes and shyly laughing about it all the while. He should have known then, when you didn’t even tease him for the way his ears stuck out from under his yarmulke.</p><p>When you killed Snoke, the night of Han’s murder, the night Kylo thought his life was over, he knew then. He had been drowning in the ocean of humanity, but when you rescued him from the gutter and kissed him for the very first time, he happily swallowed the salted water of your adoration until his lungs were full of it – and for the first time in his life, instead of fighting the tides, he became them.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>If it be your will, if there is a choice</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let the rivers fill, let the hills rejoice</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let your mercy spill</em>
</p><p>
  <em>On all these burning hearts in Hell</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If it be your will, to make us well</em>
</p><p> </p><p>When he sees the little bundle of joy in her pretty white dress, her eyes big and wide and eager to take it all in – the lights and the glass windows of the temple, the music and sounds and prayers and the candles on the menorah that burns proudly. A million possibilities for life in this one small infant, so many opportunities.</p><p>And you, his wife whom he would do anything for – what a miracle that you are his, and he is yours, here together in this temple alive and well, after the lives you have lived. How far you both have come from those first meetings, those shy attempts at conversation. How far you have both come from the anger and pain and violence and rage – to be sitting here, in synagogue, on Hanukkah together.</p><p>He is overcome with emotion then, blinks back tears as his jaw clenches to try and keep composure. Luke is looking at him, speaking words that Kylo doesn’t pay attention to, because all he can think about, all he can pay attention to in this moment is you. Kylo would have walked into the flames of hell for you, had you asked. Even as a teenager, he sought ways to force the universe’s hand to grant your wishes.</p><p>Sometimes you look at Kylo and wonder what goes on inside his head, when he is so quiet the way that he sometimes is. He doesn’t have the words to voice the depth and ferocity of his love for you, and he doesn’t know if he ever will. He is overwhelmed sometimes, with the truth of it all – you love him too. You voice it in different ways, but you are vocal just the same. It reminds him of the Torah, of how the text is there but the interpretation is ever-changing.</p><p>The service is over, and you move to stand. Like the current to the moon, he stands with you, moves with you, a hand on the small of your back. Kylo’s heart pounds as the little face peeks over your shoulder at him, and when he smiles, she smiles too.</p><p>She has your smile.</p><p>He knows what Luke meant, now.</p><p>The beauty is in the becoming.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And draw us near and bind us tight</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All your children here, in their rags of light</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In our rags of light, all dressed to kill</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And end this night, if it be your will</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If it be your will</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>